At the present time there is a problem relating to the separation of the resultant products of breaking open apricot stones.
That is to say, it is presently well known, in order to recover apricot stones, to break the shell or husk around the kernel the present method then of separating the husk from the kernel is to use aerodynamic of air separation.
Unfortunately, perhaps because of the shape of the resultant husk resulting from the necessary fracturing technique or because of the shape of the husk as compared to its weight, the separation is not fully effective, and it is then necessary to ensure that no kernels or only a minimal number of kernels are lost because of ineffective separation.
This is at the present time, achieved by hand, that is the resultant product of the aerodynamic separation is then spread out onto a moving belt and one, two or more people observe the result by hand and manually pick out any kernels remaining in the mixture.
The husks of course are then discarded.
Perhaps it goes without saying that the present manual method of separation is both expensive and somewhat arduous and it would certainly be prefered if there was some way in which the separation could be effected in another way, but hitherto that this has not been considered to be economically possible.